"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
-- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

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Saturday, October 27, 2012

Wasted Motion

Again, just an observation on who's throwing the election and whom to blame: Jill Stein is polling at a statistically insignificant rate, even more so in swing states, whilst spoiled dingbats and butthurt crackers are apparently going for Rmoney en masse. I am willing to bet my next paycheck that, should Vulture/Voucher manage to squeeze this one out of their poopchutes, not one of the swing state losses will be able to be blamed on the DFHs, and all of them will be because of the party jumpers. Bet your last dollar on that, friends 'n' neighbors.

As I've pointed out too many times in the past with the N8r b8rs (now in their second decade!), the problem here is not so much who gets stuck with the blame, it's the inevitable practical ramifications of the scapegoating. American political parties these days move to the right when they lose the presidential election, that is the intent and design of the ratchet/pawl system we have. Scapegoating the DFHs simply gives automatic cover to ratcheting the Democrats, whether that takes the form of further capitulation to extreme-right jabber, or putting up "more electable" candidates in the snake-handler states.

Moreover, it absolves them from having to look at the real reason why they lost in the first place. With Gore in 2000, there were so many factors, only the most unself-aware partisan could have singled out Nader not just as the proximal cause, but as the only cause. With Obama, the cause for the supposed mass defection is said to be that Rmoney will be better on jobs, even though he has yet to say exactly how he'll create decent jobs here, even though he made his fortune creating jobs overseas.

So are DFHs also responsible for that much greater degree of mass cognitive dissonance, of collective stupidity? Of course not. But until we either make voting mandatory and on Saturday, like in Australia, and mandate a short, publicly-financed campaign to take all the pelf out of the perpetual-campaign system, they'll keep getting scapegoated. Failing that, we need to start finding ways, individually and collectively, to start divesting ourselves from this system that shackles us to lifetimes of wage slavery and debt peonage.